Dental Mental Health

I have been neglecting the blog world more than usual lately, and the reason is because I have had some appointments with the dentist.  Is that a good enough excuse?  Because it’s really all I’ve got.

Tomorrow, at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty I make my third and final trip to Smiles Dental House of Horrors (not its real name) to get two chipped teeth repaired (not caused by chewing on branches or twigs) and then I have to suffer through the obligatory cleaning where the pissed off dental hygienist  tries to scrape off every speck of enamel I have left while muttering about my gums bleeding on her instruments.  All hygienists are pissed off, it’s in their job description.  Plaque makes them downright belligerent.  They really should try to be thankful for it, because – come on – without it, they would be unemployed.

All my life I’ve been a dentist avoider.  I prefer to wait until the situation gets serious before wasting their time on something as boring as mere maintenance.  I went for two days once with a toothache because I was afraid of the pain the dentist might cause with his drills. So I guess you would call that suffering pain to avoid suffering pain.   Not the proudest or brightest page in my life story.

My dental phobia is a lot milder than it used to be, thanks to a great dentist who has a lot of patience with wimps.  All it takes is a couple of traumatic experiences as a child to instill a lifelong fear – and then a hundred million non traumatic visits to get over it.  I just have to keep telling myself that it’s an hour or two – that’s all – and then it’s over.  And I can come home and play candy crush for the rest of the day.  There’s still that little kid in me who likes to be rewarded for being brave.

Just Jazzy 129

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly, to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse

I’ve never been afraid of the dark. Without the darkness we’d never know the magic of the moon and the stars. Imagine a life without the man in the moon.

Grim Reaper Gallows Humor

It’s another Prompt For The Promptless – Gallows Humor is humor that makes fun of a life-threatening, disastrous, or terrifying situation.

And often to scaredy-cat me, not funny at all.

Except when it’s in cartoon form.  Then it’s funny.

From http://themetapicture.com

From the book “All My Friends Are Dead”

The Litmus Test For Dogs

Cover of Scary Dog (Starters)

I am afraid of dogs.  Not just big ugly ones either, although they’ve been freaking me out in nightmares since childhood.  Perhaps I was Little Red Riding Hood in a former life.  To me, big black canine type creatures are terrifying.

I am also afraid of little dogs.  I was riding a bike once and got chased by a yappy little terrier who jumped up and nipped at my ankles.  I suppose if I had stopped I could have kicked him halfway across somebody’s yard, but that thought didn’t occur to me until much later (once my heart beat had returned to normal) and I probably could never have done such a thing anyway.  I just rode faster to get away from him.  Which made him like his little game even more and try even harder to bite my foot off.  It seriously scared me.

Where this fear of dogs comes from is a mystery.  I have never been viciously attacked or bitten by a dog.  We grew up with dogs for pets, and with friendly familiar dogs I’m fine.  It’s the strange and unfamiliar ones that make me uneasy to the point of panic.  Somebody told me once to calm down because dogs can sense fear.  So of course ever since then I’ve been twice as apprehensive thinking I’ll be attacked simply for being such a wimp.

I’m not a dog lover, but I’m not a dog hater, either – more of a dog tolerater. There are dogs I like okay, some I like less, and many I don’t care for at all.  Sorry to all my family and friends who love their dogs so much.  I like your kids and your cats – I hope that makes up for it.

So if you want me to like (tolerate and not run away screaming from) your dog, here’s my deal breaker.  He can’t look scary.

growl. (Photo credit: kunkelstein)

Plus it’s also good if he doesn’t growl at me, drool on me, smell bad, jump up and knock me over, bite me or lick my face. Or crap on my floor.

This blog post was inspired by Rarasaurs’s Prompts For the Promptless, Ep 8:  The Litmus Test is a test in which a single factor (as an attitude, event, or fact) is decisive.  In other words, it’s a single question test, not necessarily related to the information that is gleaned from the test.

What Are You Afraid Of?

Public speaking (Photo credit: brainpop_uk)

Daily Prompt: 1984

You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.

1.  The Ocean

2.  Flying

3.  Death

4.  Heights

5.  Failure

6.  Rejection

7.  Public Speaking

Bunnies Gone Wild! (Photo credit: dissolve)

8.  Nuclear War

9.  Being Lost

10.  The Unknown

Some room, huh?

I suppose it could be worse – being locked up with rabid wild animals, spiders, snakes and a dentist.

I wish I had a morbid fear of eating salted peanuts for breakfast, but apparently that doesn’t bother me at all.

Complete This Thought

copy paste (Photo credit: razorfrog)

Start the sentence with I, add one of these words or phrases, and dig deep to finish the thought:…..am, want, have, wish, hate, fear, hear, search, wonder, regret, love, ache, always, usually, am not, dance, sing, never, rarely, cry, am not always, lose, am confused, need, should, dream…

Feel free to cut and paste and complete it any way you want.  I was going to do a sentence for each of them, but this is what happened instead.  Some muse or other took over and a kind of poetry happened.

What Am I?

I am old

But I want to stay young forever.

I have everything I need and yet

I wish for more.

I hate nothing but hate itself

And fear what it can do.

I hear only what I want to hear

And tune out all the rest.

I search inside for peace

And wonder if this is what it feels like.

Regretting nothing, loving fiercely,

Aching for time to slow down

While I’m running out of it.

Usually life makes me happy.

I am not complaining.

Even though I dance awkwardly

And sing off-key.

I never can stay sad for long

And rarely cry about anything

But I am not always brave.

I lose focus and become confused.

I need the quiet to bring things back

So I should appreciate it when it’s all around me.

Sometimes I dream so hard I can’t wake up.

Inspired by My Favorite Book

“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succour, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.” (Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale)

Sometimes I find myself on the very brink of telling someone things that I have never told anyone before. The words are forming themselves into sentences in my head and dancing around in my brain in gleeful anticipation of bursting forth, of flying from my mouth. Panic swells inside me. I will not be able to stop them once they start, and then I will never be able to snatch them back.

I force myself to hesitate and wait for them to recede in numbing slow motion. Their impatience to be heard at last begins to fade and the words themselves drift blissfully away into mist and the recollections of that past are gone. Perhaps they are lost forever. Please, please let them be lost forever. The truth would be too painful for my listener to bear, and what good could ever come of that? I will tell her a bedtime story instead, containing little chips of the truth, but not enough of them to mar the happy ending.